Wow, thanks to all for your overwhelming and uplifting response to my last email. I really enjoy each email that I receive – it just often feels very time consuming to write individual emails with so little consistent connection to the internet. But I’m glad that you seem to appreciate the updates, so I’ll do my best to keep them coming.
I’m really grateful to have been able to come prior to the arrival of the Threads team and even more grateful for these two weeks that followed their departure. Things can feel so busy and rushed when attempting to connect with each project and I’m now able to focus on each student with which I speak.
For example on Monday I was able to assist a student with their university application. To walk him through each question and help him to enter his latest grades into their correct slots is a very simple gift that I’m able to give. And while at moments I wonder how he’ll be able to thrive, let alone survive, in a university course when the application proves daunting – my pride is reinstated when we check the boxes with regard to his parental education.
Mother: PRIMARY SCHOOL X Father: PRIMARY SCHOOL X
And when it comes time to check the positions that his parents currently hold with regard to work, he calmly explains that they are both deceased. And I begin to imagine the many obstacles this young man has overcome simply to get to grade 12. And what gifts I’ve been given in this life…to not think twice when I once checked boxes that both parents have more than a 4 year degree, not to mention the love that flowed freely from them both.
The other day I went to the home of one of my students to complete an interview. She graciously shared so much of herself with me – at times through tears. Later I sat on the roof of Kuyasa with Odwa and we burned through an entire 60-minute tape and talked for another hour after the tape ran out! It’s difficult to express the feeling of gratitude that I have that these students are still so willing to be vulnerable in talking with me. I feel really honored at the depths to which they are still willing to go even after a year has passed. I know it’s a truly a cathartic process for them and one student even commented that they had never been asked the question of how they felt after the death of a parent.
Please be in prayer for one of my students Ncumisa. She is a media village student that was traveling with the YWAM team into Mozambique when the bus carrying the team was in an accident. It’s hard to know all the details from this distance but several of us have spoken with her. From what we can understand in the early morning hours the driver either fell asleep or took a turn too quickly causing the entire bus to flip. The students were sleeping and Ncumisa woke outside of the bus with her two front teeth knocked out of her mouth. The windows of the bus had shattered and as far as we can tell it is possible that most of the passengers were thrown from the bus. Praise be to God that all of the students are as okay as they can be, truly shaken up of course, but some of the worst injuries sound like a fractured hand and a few sore backs. Ncumisa is down playing her injuries we believe so as not to worry others, but she describes her missing teeth and a few scrapes as the worst of her injuries. A doctor has checked her out, and the team is now headed to a hospital. So please keep her in your prayers.
So many more stories to tell of course – but those are just a few highlights and lowlights before I fly home again this Friday. I’m happy that it looks like I’ll be returning to a job pretty quickly after my return – truly an answer to prayer.
Loving you all from the other side of the globe,
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