The beauty of the Lord, revealed in the Cape!

Hi to everyone from South Africa!! I am truly in the most beautiful place on earth, and I so happen to be staying in the most perfect spot of the most beautiful place. When I walk out the door of the Team House, to my right is a huge mountain, and directly in front of me is the most beautiful view of the Atlantic Ocean. The last two days have been spent getting acquainted with Cape Town and Living Hope, the organization through which we will be serving next week. Not only am I totally in love with Cape Town, I am also in love with Living Hope. Their vision and passion is exactly what I dream of doing in the world! They have sites in the various communities throughout Cape Town that seek to meet the people of the community where they are. LH challenges Capetonians (did I spell that right?) to dream big and imagine a life beyond the slums in which many of them live. LH offers numerous programs to empower people in the community to do and be something truly great and amazing. They have a wound dressing station at one location, classes to teach people to sew and garden at another, kids clubs for after school all over...they also have a place where really sick and/or dying people can come and hopefully get better, but if they do not get better, they at least have a place to die in peace and dignity. We have not yet worked with LH, but we got the tour of their locations yesterday. I am so pumped to dive right in and serve with LH!!!

Today has been an incredible day. After watching the sun set over the water while sitting on a rock in the ocean last night, we rose early this morning to take a ferry ride to Robben Island, where we were amazed and surrounded by God's incredible beauty revealed through Creation. When we arrived at Robben Island, we got a tour and were educated on what exactly Robben Island is. For those who don't know (because I did not know before reading the book for this class), Robben Island is the prison island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 13 (is that right? ha!) years before finally rising to become South Africa's president back in the day. We actually were led on a tour through the maximum security prison, where Mandela was, by a man who is a former prisoner of Robben Island. The men (the island was only for black male prisoners) had all been imprisoned for sabotage and fighting against the government. When I asked our guide (a precious, precious man) if the prisoners there were actually guilty of their charges, he responded by saying that each of RI's prisoners had been activists in fighting politically against the apartheid government. I am not going to write a book here about the apartheid govt., but I will say that I really respect Mandela, our tour guide, and the other former prisoners who risked (and some who gave) their lives to fight for the freedom that belongs to all human beings. Their prison cells (for the ones in the highest security section, who had individual cells) were smaller than the dog kennels where the security dogs resided when not "on duty". All they had in their tiny cell was a small window, a blanket, a small mat that looked like worn-out carpet scraps, and a 5-gallon (or x-liter, because they are on the metric system here) bucket they used as their "bathroom". How absolutely incredible it was to stand where Mandela stood and to see the lime quarry where he spent every day of several years digging through rock with his bare hands and to see and take a picture with a man who was imprisoned there with him for the same cause! I respect their courage and their ambition to make not only their own lives better, but also the lives of generations of South Africans to come. Amazing.

After Robben Island, we went to Table Mountain, a huge mountain that has a "flat" top, thus named Table Mountain, and got to ride a cable car to the very top, where we walked around and explored. I have never seen anything as magnificent as I have seen yesterday and today. At every moment in Cape Town, I am overwhelmed by the beauty that surrounds me, and I cannot help but want to sing praises to the Lord! Pictures absolutely cannot capture the beauty and majesty of the Creation of our Lord.

Though we have only been acquainting ourselves with Cape Town, I wish I could tell you all the things the Lord is doing spiritually, but I do not think I can because I do not really know myself! I just know He is at work. Do you know what it is like when you know something incredible is about to come your way but you cannot even imagine what it might be? Yeah, that's a really cool thing, and that is where I am. I feel like something huge and life-changing is just around the corner, but I absolutely do not know what it is, so I lift myself up to the Creator of the beauty that surrounds me. The Lord makes incredible goodness and beauty from nothing, and He will make something incredible out of me and out of the precious people living in Cape Town and all over the world. Woo hooo!!! :)

Blessings to all, and to all a good night!