Last Days of Walk in the Light

I will be writing two posts in a relatively short time, this one will be talking about my last days at Walk in the Light, and the other one that will follow later will be talking about a historical event in South Africa. As I mentioned, Monday and Tuesday were our last days at Walk in the Light. On Monday we sorted donated clothes and then packed them according to gender and size in small plastic bags. We then loaded them into multiple cars, hopped on top of the Range Rover (that's right, on top of it) and drove around Haniville delivering clothes to the township. It was moving to see how much this meant to the people. One woman came walking past us with no shoes and a pack that maybe had two shirts and two pants in it, and was so thankful and happy for what she received. It is amazing that the clothes that we discard and would not wear anymore, are cherished and appreciated in this township. It really puts it into perspective.

Later that afternoon we went to the house of one of the workers at Walk in the Light, Neils. He and his wife Helen work with equestrian therapy, using horses as a well to overcome trauma such as addiction, divorce, or even rape. They told us how working with horses helps to show us a lot about ourselves. For many people who are struggling, learning how to work with horses shows that they have some control in their own lives. Helen allowed us to see how horses can teach us about ourselves. She had us get into a coral with a horse and had us try to get the horse to move and stop. Some of us tried a calm method others tried more aggressive methods, but none had much success. She then taught us how being confident and assertive is different from aggressive and was still kind and let us try again. It was amazing how we all changed and were able to control the horse. It really did teach us a lot about ourselves.

Finally on our last day at Walk in the Light we were cleaning up an Old playground and making room for new additions. This included us pulling large polls out of the ground. That was a lot more difficult than it sounds and became a good team building exercise. It took all of us working together to get the poles out of the ground. One in particular was extremely stubborn and took John shoveling around it while both Jamison and I pull with all of our strength. Like I said it was good team building.

We did many things Wednesday, much of which I will talk about in my next blog, but one thing we did was talk about our upcoming assignment in Bulwer. During this conversation we found out that we would not be accepted in the rural Zulu culture as ministers unless we had on black shirts and collars, like priests do in the States. We then had to take a trip downtown to buy these shirts, which weren't cheap by the way. It was funny to watch us try to put these collars on because it was a lot more difficult than it looked. After we figured it out we looked so funny and out of place; we didn't really no how to pull the look off. We looked more like criminals in priests disguise then real priests. It was funny. Hopefully we can wear it with more authority later.

That is what happened so far this week. Pretty exciting. Look for another blog a little later talking about another aspect of life. Until then, God bless.